


Second Contact War

by Kahika



Series: Relay Monument Incident [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Foreplay, Grief/Mourning, Survivor Guilt, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 04:25:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3796639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahika/pseuds/Kahika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While the <i>Normandy</i>'s on lockdown, Ashley tries to get her mind off Virmire with a few different kinds of beer and Paragade with vodka. Garrus tries to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Contact War

"Williams? What are you doing?"

"I'm off-duty until tomorrow," Ashley says automatically, leaning on the bar and trying to make it look like she's not. There are two good things about Chora's Den. One of them is their very supportive bar.

Garrus twitches his mandibles in mild disapproval. Closer inspection reveals he's in civvies, and while it's not the first time she's seen him out of armor, it's still weird every time. "Mm-hm."

"We're on lockdown," she points out, her hands tight on her glass. "And this beats sulking on the ship like Shepard."

"How many have you had?" he asks.

She tries to remember, and ends up just shrugging. What a bad marine she is. "I poured one out for Kaidan," she says, because that's one less drink down her throat.

His eyes soften, and he takes the seat next to her, ordering his own drink. She doesn't recognize the name, probably something turian and better quality than what she's drinking. "What does pouring one out mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like: You get a drink and you pour it out on the ground. It's one your fallen squadmate would have drunk."

She never poured any out for the 212, and she feels a little bad about it, but she can't afford thirty drinks she's not going to actually drink.

Garrus swirls his glass, then sips. "An odd human tradition, but if it helps."

"I think pouring some down my throat has been more helpful." She signals the bartender, then glares at Garrus when he shoos him away. "I don't need a babysitter, Garrus."

"Oh, no, I'm just a squadmate: Someone to watch your six," he says smoothly. "Unless you'd rather have Wrex down here. I'm sure he'd act as your krantt."

Ashley stares at him, waiting for her translator to kick in on that last word. When it doesn't, she decides she's too drunk for krogan cultural lessons.

"If you don't know how many you've had, do you know _what_ you've had?"

She shrugs. "A few different kinds of crappy beer. Paragade with vodka," she says. "Why, Vakarian? I didn't know you cared."

His mandibles flare. She suspects it's in exasperation. "Of course I care: You're part of the team. And..." He hesitates for a moment, has another sip of his drink, and soldiers on. "I know you must have been having a rough time lately."

"I'm alive," she says dryly, raising her empty glass. The bartender comes over, and this time Garrus doesn't stop him from topping her up; he just watches her with a bit of a frown as she knocks half of it back. "All smooth sailing."

"All smooth sailing, so you're drinking crappy beer and Paragade in Chora's Den. Shepard once told me you don't like Chora's. And _Paragade_ , Williams, really? Have some self respect and drink Tupari, at least."

"Paragade's cheaper, and I'm on shore leave," she says. "Flux stopped serving me."

There's the other good thing about Chora's: They'll serve anyone with the credits, no matter how drunk they are. Plus, she'd been hoping no one from the ship would think to find her in a bar full of asari shaking their asses.

Garrus sighs. "Just because it's shore leave doesn't mean you should do something you might regret."

"Like what?" she asks, challenging him with her eyes to come out and say it.

He shakes his head instead of taking the bait. "There are so many things, and you could probably get a lot of the illegal ones done in here without getting arrested for a while. C-Sec doesn't really pay attention to this place."

Belatedly, Ashley remembers she's talking to a ex-cop.

"No illegal plans for me," she says. She's not feeling up to a dishonorable discharge; she just wants to forget about Virmire and being grounded and maybe actually feel good about something for the first time since the geth overwhelmed her. "If anything I was just thinking it'd be nice to get laid. How are you as a wingman?"

Garrus pauses. "I'm sorry, my translator didn't give me the colloquial meaning."

"How are you at getting people laid?"

That gets a chuckle out of him. "Below average, but sometimes the ladies look at me and think they'd do better with my friend."

"Works for me," she says, and downs the rest of her glass, slamming it on the table when she's done. "Just tell the guys what a great shot I am or something."

There aren't a lot of human men in Chora's tonight, and fewer still who are more interested in a woman who's actually willing to leave the bar with them, but somehow, Ashley fails to hook up with any of them. She'd be insulted if she wasn't so drunk. Instead, she blames Garrus.

"Are you deliberately cockblocking me, Vakarian?"

"I've been known to get human anatomy wrong, but I was pretty sure human females don't have -" She punches him in the arm. "I _told_ you I was bad at this!"

Ashley groans. "Screw it, I'm done. I'm headed back."

"I can't believe you're giving up," says Garrus, amused.

"Gotta get some drinks for Joker, anyway," she says, going for the door with him on her heels. "He'll think we've forgotten about him."

"He sent you on an alcohol run?"

"Not officially," she says. "But Kaidan and I always get him something when we're on shore and he has to stay onboard."

She only realizes her mistakes when Garrus winces.

"He'll think _I've_ forgotten about him," she corrects herself quietly, coming to a stop. "Because _I_ always get him something when _I'm_ on shore."

Awkwardly, Garrus pats her shoulder. She's too disappointed in herself for that slip up to shake him off.

"Why don't _I_ get the drinks?" he suggests. "I'm sure you've spent enough credits on booze for yourself."

"I've got the money," she says reflexively, not wanting to owe anyone else on the squad anything, even if it's just credits and not her life.

"Any merchant who doesn't want to lose their liquor license probably won't sell to you anyway," he points out, which is very true. "And I want to get myself something too."

"Fine."

"That's our girl," he says, patting her shoulder with a little more confidence. "Come on, you'll have to come with me. I don't know what Joker likes."

This shore leave, it doesn't matter what Joker likes: She gets him a couple of bottles of Canadian lager that _Kaidan_ liked, trusting him to pour one out. Garrus is actually right in that she wouldn't have been able to afford it on her own, but he simply shrugs at the price, buying both bottles along with his bottle of dextro brandy.

As they carry their goods back to the ship, Ashley squints ahead, seeing some familiar faces coming out of the docking bay elevator, and immediately straightens, trying to hide the booze behind her back. "Commander."

"You're off-duty," Shepard reminds her, but Ashley only lets her posture relax a little, not wanting to look _as_ drunk as she is. _Thanks for saving my life, skipper, let me put it to good use by getting completely wasted._

"I'm surprised to see you off the ship," says Garrus, drawing Shepard's attention from her.

Shepard shrugs. "Anderson wanted to see me in Flux."

An odd meeting place to start with, but after Flux's bartenders stopped serving her for intoxication, Ashley has to try not to laugh.

"Are you two going back?" Shepard adds.

Garrus nods. "Had about enough excitement this shore leave."

"As you were," she says, and the shore party heads for the rapid transit.

Ashley just about collapses with relief; luckily Garrus is ready for it. "On a scale of one to ten, how drunk do you think I looked?"

"Shepard just saved your life," he points out. "I doubt she's going to follow that up with a dishonorable discharge while you're off-duty."

She scowls, and pushes off to the elevator. As if she needed a reminder of Virmire.

Perhaps realizing this, Garrus holds his tongue for possibly the first elevator ride in his life, only chuckling a little at the news of hanar protestors blocking a Prothean dig site. Neither of them speak until they're in the _Normandy_ 's airlock, waiting for decontamination, when Ashley calls out, "Joker! Got a present for you!"

The intercom switches on. " _It's not even my birthday!_ "

"I know!" she says, even though she doesn't know when his birthday really is. Once the airlock finally opens, she swings left to the bridge, where she deposits the lager in Joker's lap, getting a look of genuine awe as he examines the labels. "Happy bullshit grounding day."

"This is why you're my favorite," Joker says, and, seeing Garrus coming up behind her, adds, "Alliance soldier."

"No offense taken," Garrus says generously, for some reason not taking credit for buying the beer.

Ashley leans on the back of a chair. "Hey, can you do me a favor? Page me in the cargo bay if anyone else comes back to the ship. E _spe_ cially the Commander."

Joker's eyes widen. "Don't tell me that _you two_ -"

Garrus bursts out laughing, and Ashley shakes her head a little too hard. " _God_ , no! I just want some warning so I can _try_ to look less wasted."

"You look _incredibly_ wasted, Williams," says Joker. "But you're on."

"This is why you're _my_ favorite," she says, and she and Garrus leave.

It's not her shift in the sleeper pods yet, so Ashley grabs some water in the mess before heading down to the empty cargo bay (the requisitions officer had said something earlier about topping up supplies). She joins Garrus at the Mako instead of heading to her usual station, though: Guns and alcohol don't mix, that's been drilled in her since she was a kid, and even she can tell that guns and the sincere belief that she should be dead don't mix either.

They end up sitting on the floor, their backs companionably nestled into one of the Mako's hubcaps as she drinks her water, he drinks his brandy, and they talk about anything and everything: Their families (she's somehow surprised to learn that he has a sister), their training (military training at _fifteen_ suddenly makes his skills on the field make sense), their plans for after they beat Saren and Sovereign (he wants to reapply for Spectre candidacy, and she laughs and shakes her head when he suggests that she apply too: she's not good enough for the Alliance; what would a group of aliens want with her?).

Deep into his bottle, they even end up confessing their first impressions of each other. Garrus rattles off his C-Sec profiling of her, and Ashley's relaxed enough to admit, "Honestly, when you and Wrex first came on board, I wasn't in favor: Humanity's first alien enemy and a merc on the Alliance's most advanced ship? Would you want a Blue Sun on the turians' best ship?" Garrus shakes his head. "I thought so. So I told Shepard, explained my family situation to her, and she obviously wasn't happy. I said I'd follow her orders: If she told me to kiss a turian, I'd ask which cheek."

"Wait," he says. "What do your sisters have to do with this?"

Her eyes narrow. "Come _on_ , Garrus. Surely you know your turian military history. What was the name of the human general at Shanxi?"

"General Willi-- _oh_."

"Oh," she echoes, a little mockingly. Really, she's surprised it took him this long to realize.

"Right," he says, nodding. "Okay, so what was the other thing?"

"Kissing," Ashley repeats. "You know, mouth to mouth action that often leads to sex?"

His mandibles flare slowly. "So that's what it's called. I've seen it on the Citadel - not the sex, obviously, but the mouth to mouth, or on the cheek. Humans and asari, mostly."

She stares at him for a moment, and then starts chuckling. "Wait - you're telling me _Garrus Vakarian_ has never been kissed?"

Garrus huffs. "I've only slept with _turian_ women."

"There are _thirteen_ -year-olds who have had their first kiss."

"It's not _done_ by my people."

"Welcome to Human Affection 101 with Instructor Ashley Williams," she proclaims, then laughs. "Oh man, Granddad must be rolling in his grave."

For a split second, Garrus looks as confused as she's ever seen on a turian, and then she's too close to his face to see his expression. She only touches her lips to his mouth for a moment before moving away, and then she watches him for a reaction.

It's slow coming. "That's it?" he says eventually. " _That_ 's human foreplay?"

She stares at him, and then shakes her head. "Smartass. I said 'affection', not 'foreplay'."

"Seems like I always see them a lot more involved than that," he says, waving a hand in the universal gesture for _what do you expect?_

"You want _involved_?"

She doesn't give him time to answer, crushing her mouth to his and slipping her tongue inside while he's still trying to come up with a response. His whole body falters against hers, and it's the biggest victory she's had since she shot a husk right in the face the day before Virmire, leaving Garrus Vakarian, turian, former C-Sec officer, second biggest smartass on the _Normandy_ (Joker takes first place), completely out of his depth as she charts his mouth with her tongue. For the first time since she put the salarians' bomb in position, she feels like she has control over a situation, even if he tastes completely - well, _alien_ compared to all the humans she's kissed before (she has to wonder how much of that is the brandy, or the whole dextro thing) and his face plates are hard against her mouth. It feels good; even on the physical side alone, better than she'd like to admit even to herself.

And then he shifts his mouth and tentatively slides his tongue along hers, and Ashley feels a little of that control start to slip. She tries to wrestle it back but he's a fast learner, giving as good as he gets, which is messy because they're both drunk and he's new to this but it's still pretty damn good. The only thing she can control any more is her hands and body, resisting the urge to touch him anywhere else. She finds that she doesn't want to control anything more than that, doesn't mind the surprise of his tongue flicking across her teeth, his shiver when she sucks on his tongue. Their teeth knock together and as they readjust, there's just enough space between them for her to laugh at their clumsiness -

The sound breaks the spell, and she pulls away to lean back on the Mako, looking at the weapons lockers instead of at his face. For a long moment, neither of them speak. Ashley pretends she's not catching her breath, pretends Garrus only sounds similarly breathless because it's his first kiss and who really masters breathing on their first kiss?

"So what do turians do?" she asks, once she feels like her voice will come out at roughly its normal pitch.

His voice is steady and authoritative, but the subharmonic wavers, and she doesn't even want to know what that means. "Affection's just a headbutt." He leans over and rests his forehead on hers, but continues speaking right in her face; it's weirdly intimate. "No force to it like the krogans, but this can be platonic, familial, not necessarily romantic, usually not sexual. Now, _foreplay_ is in the mandibles," he says, giving a turian term that her translator fails on. "You bite the other person's like -"

He dips down, realizes: "I guess I'll just use your chin."

His face plates scrape against her skin rougher than stubble as he nips at her. He's probably being careful, because he doesn't draw blood even though his teeth are sharper than any others she's allowed on her person, and that's both sweet and infuriating. As light as the touch is, it's right where she likes to get started.

"That's the equivalent of that first kiss," he says without drawing back, his breath hot and unsteady on her neck. "The more involved version -"

Garrus runs his teeth along her jawline and lays the occasional bite, still not breaking skin but harder and hanging on longer. Ashley restrains herself from shuddering, but does try to grab at the tire for support, especially when he starts down her neck. Her legs fall open on the floor, and she tilts her head to the side to give him better access. A particularly forceful bite right where her neck meets her shoulder finally gets a groan out of her. _First blood,_ Ashley thinks, and she's sure she's right when he _grins_ on the next one, but all too soon he's stopping at the neckline of her shirt, pulling away with a growl that cuts off a second later. She opens her eyes to find him studiously looking at the requisition officer's station.

"Turian Foreplay 101 with Instructor Garrus Vakarian," he says, both notes of his voice rough and low. "Adapted for human anatomy."

"Seems pretty one sided compared to kissing," she says.

He glances over at her, his mouth open like he's got a comeback ready, but he shuts it when he sees his own handiwork. "I hurt you."

Ashley frowns and touches her neck: Yeah, that's definitely a series of hickeys, and with Joker and half the squad having seen her and Garrus coming to the _Normandy_ together... "I'm okay. But I'm definitely gonna be hiding in my helmet for a few days." Or putting in a requisitions order for concealer.

"You're sure?"

"It's the good kind of hurt," she says, and she doesn't miss the flash of interest in his eyes. "We do that too, just obviously not on mandibles. And usually with suction instead of teeth."

He leans back on the Mako, considering. "Never thought about it with suction."

"Because you guys don't have _lips_ ," Ashley points out, and leans over. "Human Foreplay 102, adapted for turians -"

She gets her teeth into one of his mandibles, grinning a little when it draws a hiss from him, then closes her lips around it and sucks like she's trying to leave a hickey. Turian plating, from what she's observed when Garrus gets thrown by biotics or charging krogans, doesn't seem to bruise, but apparently it's sensitive enough for her efforts to make him murmur, " _Spirits_ ," and in those tones of voice, it doesn't seem so one sided after all. She brushes her thumb across his other mandible, and he seems to take it as permission to touch her, grabbing tight at her shoulder as she licks down to another spot. His talons dig into her shirt, blunted slightly by his gloves, before with a great effort he pushes her away with the palm of his hand.

"No good?" Her voice comes out high and embarrassed. Whoops.

"No, just wanted to take these off," he says, removing his gloves. "What _you_ were doing was just like the _Normandy_."

Ashley blinks. "What?"

"Human and turian cooperation to develop something better than either species could come up with alone."

She bursts out laughing, covering her eyes because the joke's that bad. He joins in a second later, the chords of their three notes echoing around the empty cargo bay until she looks up and catches his eye.

She's never sure later who moved first, but whoever started it, they're kissing again, hands on waists and thighs and faces; it's probably the first time she's felt his bare hand instead of his gloves patting her shoulder or shoving her out of enemy fire. Garrus is more confident now, making up for his inexperience with enthusiasm, which she'll never turn down. After a few minutes she even rewards it, breaking the kiss to suck at his mandible, and he gasps, half-closing his eyes.

Ashley climbs onto his lap, straddling him. With a roll of her hips she discovers that there are some parts of turian anatomy that aren't so different from humans after all. He groans, claws nicking through her shirt to her skin, and well, she only has so many PT uniform shirts, so she pushes his hands aside and removes it.

Garrus stares. It's flattering for about three seconds, and then she recognizes his expression as the turian version of confusion, and then it gets weird.

"I have to ask," she says. "Have you ever seen a shirtless human woman before?"

"A few years ago I arrested a streaker," he says, getting a giggle out of her. "Had a handful of drunk and disorderlies in the Wards, too. But I'm still not really sure what I'm looking at."

 _Aliens_. "How about less looking and more touching?"

"I can do that," he says, trailing a hand up her stomach.

"No holes, that's expensive," she adds quickly, as his claws touch on the bottom of her bra.

He pauses, then nods, leaning down to lick at the top of her breast. Ashley smothers a giggle as his visor digs into her collarbone, and puts a finger to his chin to make him look at her.

"Let's ditch the tech," she says, removing her own omni-tool and sliding it under the Mako to lead by example.

Garrus chuckles. "Good thing my translator's subdermal."

With that, he removes his omni-tool and visor accordingly, shoving them and, in a moment of forethought which she has to admire, the brandy and water bottles under the Mako next to her omni-tool. It's the first time she's ever seen him without his visor, but she doesn't get to look for long before he's back at it, hands cupping and squeezing her breasts, tongue and teeth and talons scraping against her skin. Ashley swears under her breath, breathier when he discovers her nipples through her bra, but she's almost as fascinated by his body as he appears to be with hers: She plays with his crest, then dips her hands down to his carapace, dragging her nails hard over the cowl of his shirt, and he shivers beneath her.

" _Yes_ , that's sensitive," he says, his voice shaky.

He promptly reaches down and takes his tunic off, and it's her turn to not know what she's looking at.

"Ever seen a shirtless turian man before?" he asks slyly.

"Briefly," Ashley admits with a bit of a grimace, because he hadn't _just_ been shirtless: "Untagged cross-species vid on a porn site a few years back."

He bursts out laughing at that, and after a moment she cracks a smile too, because the universe has banked _very_ hard to port for her to go from filtering out cross-species porn to dragging a turian to second base.

"The actor _might_ have had plastic surgery," he says eventually, still grinning. "But here - and here -"

He guides her hands to part of his carapace and to where some of his plates come together on his chest. She runs her fingers over his plates, exploring, before digging her nails in where he showed her, and he draws a deep, shuddering breath, tipping his head back.

"Teeth are good too," he says, his eyes closed. "Even if humans' teeth aren't as sharp."

She gives the edge of his carapace a hard bite for that, and then sucks on the same spot to see if it'll have the same effect as it did on his mandibles. Garrus groans, hands tight on her hips as he thrusts upwards, and Ashley grins.

With a bit of maneuvering, she soon has him lying on the floor, his talons scoring lines down her back while she figures out the ridges and valleys of his chest plates. When her hands start sliding to the hollows of his hips, he puts a hand to her cheek and pulls her down for a hungry kiss. Somehow, it ends in him flipping them over without breaking the kiss, but as her bun touches the floor, she turns her head and gives him a slight push to the chest.

"Wait, hold on -"

She raises her head just enough to pull her hair out of its bun, before the pins start poking into the back of her head. Garrus looks at her curiously as she finishes up.

"What?"

"I'm not going to pretend I _get_ the hair thing," he says, twirling a lock of it around one talon. "But you look nice right now. Different, but nice."

Ashley resists the urge to point out that not only does she have her hair down for once, but she's topless and he's marked her in at least a dozen places. Of course she looks different. Of course the guy who got her into this state would like it; she's pretty sure that transcends species boundaries.

"'Nice'," she echoes instead. "That's really high praise. Don't tell me that's turian flirting."

"Don't be ridiculous," he says, and kisses her, one hand cradling the back of her head rather than letting her hit the metal floor this time, which is surprisingly sweet. Maybe _that's_ turian flirting.

She doesn't quite realize she's spread her legs until he's nestled between them, hard and warm. They move together, the friction through the layers of fabric enough until suddenly it isn't, and then they're knocking their hands together as they scramble to shed their trousers and shoes. Garrus gets his off first, then slides over to her side and does his level best to distract her as she fumbles with her boot laces, teeth along her shoulder, talons along her waist.

"Turian son of a bitch," she mutters, and he just laughs at her.

Once she's down to her bra and panties, she considers hitting him with one of her boots, but instead she grabs him by the carapace and pulls one of his mandibles into her mouth, and it doesn't take much after that to get him flat on the floor again, his eyes half-lidded as she settles over his length, rolling her hips over him experimentally. He skims his hands over the backs of her thighs to her ass and squeezes, then as one hand dips between her legs, his mandibles flare.

" _Oh_ ," he says, his subharmonic higher than usual.

"Oh," she echoes, a little defensive, because yeah, she's wet for him, and she'd be more embarrassed if she wasn't so drunk or if it was any other alien. Her breath's shaky as he rocks up against her, agonizingly slowly, so she's very proud of herself when her voice comes out steady: "You gonna do something about it, or just gloat?"

He chuckles, and murmurs, "You're a damn handful, Ash."

His mouth is on hers before she can think of a comeback, and then all she can think of is how quickly he's taken to kissing when he'd never done it before and it's not a part of his culture, and then she stops thinking because he's also quickly gotten _good_ at it. She only breaks away from him for air, and immediately starts laying her lips and teeth on his mandibles, his carapace, his chest plates, pressing her body to his with every movement.

Garrus growls and rolls them over, returning the favor, and she runs a hand over the plates at the back of his head as he moves down her body. His talons score down her side, digging in at her waist and thigh, and she winces. Up until now, all the bites and scratches have been the kind of hurt that just turns her on more, but this time the pain's real. She's pretty sure she deserves that more than the pinpricks of pleasure.

" _Ow_ -"

His hands and mouth immediately recoil from her, his mandibles flaring in alarm. "Spirits - you're drunk and I'm hurting you. Do you want to stop?"

"I should be dead," Ashley hisses. "I can handle a little pain."

She kisses him again to shut him up, because that mandible thing she can't pronounce doesn't keep his mouth busy enough, and for good measure wraps her legs around his waist, tucking her feet behind the spikes on his calves. His hips jolt on hers as she grinds up against him. There's tension coiled in his body now like he's trying to hold back - it's the last thing she wants.

Well. Might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb, right? She reaches down between them -

" _Hey, Williams?_ "

Ashley almost shoves Garrus off of her, looking around for the cargo bay's cameras. "Are you spying on us, Joker?"

" _Would you believe that's the second time I've gotten that today?_ " Joker says. " _No, but you wanted to know if anyone else was coming back, and I just saw Shepard come onto the dock._ "

"Who were you not spying on the first time?" asks Garrus.

Forgetting she'd already said 'us', Ashley immediately shushes him, just in case Joker _didn't_ have the video feed on.

Joker chuckles. " _That would be telling. Okay, the shore party's entering the airlock. I probably won't be able to warn you if they come to the cargo bay, so quick, act sober._ "

"You're a lifesaver," says Ashley, reaching under the Mako for her things.

" _I want my medal in gold,_ " he says. " _Joker out._ "

They dress in the silence of urgency. Garrus points to his neck, and Ashley hastily swipes her hair over her shoulder to hide the bruises; she doesn't think she has time to change her shirt. But when Shepard fails to come down to the cargo bay, she breathes a sigh of relief.

And then the _Normandy_ 's thrusters fire, the inertial dampers compensating a little late for their recent disuse.

"We're not grounded any more," Garrus says in surprise, putting a hand to the floor to feel the slight vibrations of flight.

"Did Anderson talk the Council round?" Ashley wonders aloud.

The elevator activates, and she hurriedly leans on the Mako in what she hopes looks like a casual, not drunk off her ass way. By the time Shepard's coming out the doors, she's not so certain it looks as sober as she's aiming for.

"We just stole the _Normandy_ ," Shepard announces without preamble.

Garrus chuckles beside her, but Ashley feels her world drop out from under her and she's pretty sure it's not just flight nor the alcohol.

"That's treason," she blurts out. "A capital offense." And she'd thought a dishonorable discharge was the worst of her concerns.

"If we don't get to Ilos, we'll be killed by Reapers before the Alliance firing squad," says Shepard. She peers curiously at Garrus, then adds, "You're both back on duty once you sober up."

Ashley straightens. "Ma'am."

"Williams has been helping me out with the Mako, anyway," says Garrus, and Ashley restrains herself from looking at him with panic.

Shepard pauses, looking between the two of them. "Ashley, you... calibrate?"

"The cannons aren't the _only_ things in this tank that need servicing," Garrus says.

"I was getting some blood stains out of the seat covers," Ashley invents hastily, brandishing the rag she keeps in the back pocket of her PT uniform for her guns.

For a long moment, Ashley resists the urge to squirm under Shepard's gaze.

"Carry on," Shepard says eventually, the corner of her mouth twitching, and she leaves.

Abruptly, Ashley remembers that her rag's clean.

"She _knows_ ," she groans, sliding down the tire until she hits the floor. "Excuse me, I have to go figure out if this counts as fraternization." And also figure out when would be a good time to throw herself out of the airlock, considering what she'd said about kissing turians.

"You're already going to be executed for treason," Garrus points out. "I don't think you need to worry about a little fraternization. And for what it's worth, I'm not planning on telling anyone."

Ashley looks up at him and raises an eyebrow. He shrugs.

"What happens on shore leave stays on shore leave."

"Thank you," she says quietly.

"Don't mention it," he says, his talons brushing through her hair. "Besides, I feel like I learned a lot about human culture."

Despite herself, Ashley cracks a smile. "I think I learned a little about turians, too."

"There we go: It was a cultural exchange, a team building exercise," he says, and she actually laughs. He crouches down to her level, looking her in the eye, and Ashley realizes that he forgot to put his visor back on. "You _were_ wrong about one thing, though."

"What?"

"You shouldn't be dead," he says firmly, leaning forward to rest his forehead on hers. "You're _alive_ , and if some stress relief with a squadmate can make you _feel_ it, remind you what we're fighting for for _everyone_ , then I'm happy to help."

He gets up and walks away. Ashley stares after him, for once at a loss for even quoted words.

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate title: "How to Save a Life"


End file.
